4 ms·

> They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME I agree about the EME point, but for h.264 they did stand

by est31 6y ago

> They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME I agree about the EME point, but for h.264 they did stand up and lost. I can remember h.264 not working in Firefox for a long time while it did work on Chrome. It probably cost them a lot of users, but at some point you have to stop and realize that you are harming yourself more than advancing the cause.

Silhouette 6y ago
As a point of interest, Google had announced that Chrome would not be supporting H.264 around that same period, but then backtracked and never removed it. Edit: IIRC, it may have been the built-in support/licence for H.264 on Windows and Macs that kept the support in Chrome, so those running Chrome on other OSes might not have been so lucky.
bscphil 6y ago
> for h.264 they did stand up and lost. You might argue they lost the battle but won the war. A technological split between traditional media companies and web companies has developed: the former are continuing to pursue MPEG-LA endorsed codecs that enable their industry to keep a stranglehold on the market (i.e. H.264, HEVC, VVC), while the latter have moved to alternatives: a lot of hardware comes with VP9 decoding support already, and there's an enormous push (with nearly 100% buy-in) to make AV1 the web's next default video codec. This means that the web is moving towards media streaming on mostly royalty-free codecs, which was exactly the goal Mozilla originally had.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  > You might argue they lost the battle but won the war. The tide of the war is turning, little thanks to them IMO. VP9 was a Google initiative and they were already interested in royalty free codecs because of YouTube. Chrome didn't have to lose the H264 battle to get to work on VP9 and other royalty free technologies. Mozilla didn't do anyone any favors by losing the battle of H264 on its own. It has only made them weaker for future battles.

by est31 6y ago

Silhouette 6y ago

As a point of interest, Google had announced that Chrome would not be supporting H.264 around that same period, but then backtracked and never removed it. Edit: IIRC, it may have been the built-in support/licence for H.264 on Windows and Macs that kept the support in Chrome, so those running Chrome on other OSes might not have been so lucky.

bscphil 6y ago

> for h.264 they did stand up and lost. You might argue they lost the battle but won the war. A technological split between traditional media companies and web companies has developed: the former are continuing to pursue MPEG-LA endorsed codecs that enable their industry to keep a stranglehold on the market (i.e. H.264, HEVC, VVC), while the latter have moved to alternatives: a lot of hardware comes with VP9 decoding support already, and there's an enormous push (with nearly 100% buy-in) to make AV1 the web's next default video codec. This means that the web is moving towards media streaming on mostly royalty-free codecs, which was exactly the goal Mozilla originally had.

themacguffinman 6y ago
> You might argue they lost the battle but won the war. The tide of the war is turning, little thanks to them IMO. VP9 was a Google initiative and they were already interested in royalty free codecs because of YouTube. Chrome didn't have to lose the H264 battle to get to work on VP9 and other royalty free technologies. Mozilla didn't do anyone any favors by losing the battle of H264 on its own. It has only made them weaker for future battles.